


Overwrite

by squeequeg



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squeequeg/pseuds/squeequeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human memories don't work like AI memories; you can't overwrite or erase them.  All you can do is bury them under new ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overwrite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



About once a week, Wash decides he's going to kill them all.

It would be easy; none of them have any real military training. And it's an appealing option, especially after Sarge's "psychological assault" on Blue Base (that mostly involved informing Blue Team that a poisoned sandwich had been cleverly hidden somewhere in Blue Base), or the plumbing incident (that Tucker still swore wasn't his fault even though he'd been caught on tape stuffing what looked like a year's worth of magazines down the toilet) or Caboose somehow managing to put everybody else in armor lockdown and not noticing for three hours.

The one thing that stops him, at least in the beginning, is the little voice at the back of his head that says _okay, say you do it, say you slaughter them all and escape. Then what?_

Kill the Director? Maybe, but everything he's heard -- granted, the gossip at Valhalla Base is not exactly up to date -- says that the Director is now no more than an old broken man clinging to his memories. Kill the Counselor, the one who helped the Director come up with all those simulation scenarios? There'd be some satisfaction in that, but finding the Counselor would probably be more work than it's worth. Find the Chairman of the Oversight Sub-Committee, explain everything and clear his name? Fat chance.

Going home is not an option either; he's legally dead, and there wasn't much chance of it before, either. He's got several murders to his name, and no organization to hide behind and give them some veneer of necessity.

 _So what's the point in leaving, then?_ the little voice asks. _Might as well stay put._

If the voice sounded anything like Epsilon, he would ignore it completely. As it is, it sounds more like the man he used to be, David who signed up for Project Freelancer believing it was the last chance humanity had against the Covenant. It's not a voice he's heard much since then. That's probably why he listens to it.

That, and on some days he's not sure that it would be so easy to kill these guys.

* * *

As the weeks go by (and Simmons and Grif end up wrecking one Mongoose in the waterfall, Tucker selects a rock of his own, and Caboose puts everyone in armor lock _again_ ), it gets easier. Not necessarily better, but easier.

Wash still isn't sure how the Alpha -- how _Church_ put up with these guys for so long. Maybe it's because Church was kind of a jackass, too. Not a bad guy, but just kind of a dick sometimes. But the same is true of most of the soldiers in Valhalla, except maybe for himself. He's pretty sure that he falls squarely in the bad guy category, especially after what happened the last time he was here.

Simmons still hasn't forgiven him for shooting the guy in pink armor. That's okay. It's not the sort of thing you should forgive someone for, even if you're willing to save his life.

It comes to mind one day as he's making lunch for Caboose (who had apparently been living on Ho-Hos and Tang for God knows how many weeks, afraid that he might otherwise eat Sarge's "poisoned sandwich" -- Wash taking on kitchen duty was the least complicated solution) that the time in Valhalla could be said to be a kind of penance. He remembers hearing of old soldiers who'd joined monasteries after returning from the wars, spending their days in contemplation and menial work. It has a certain logic to it.

Maine -- back when he was still Maine, not Meta -- had a meditation technique he did regularly. It didn't make him any less angry or any less terrifying, but it did seem to make him more focused. So Wash tries something similar, when he's out on what he claims is patrol but is really a chance to get away from Blue Base before he stabs something. There's a spot on one of the cliffs with a view of all Valhalla, and he stakes it out as his own, sitting there cross-legged with his rifle across his lap.

After the first day, he chooses a spot that doesn't afford him a perfect view of Tucker's Rock.

* * *

It would be a stretch to call the change in his attitude "serenity." There's something Zen about it, but he doesn't think too much about it, and not just because when he tried to explain Zen Tucker kept asking where the hot kung-fu chicks came into it. Caboose said he understood, but he also said he understood about the armor lock, and the four-hour lockdown later that afternoon proved that wrong.

Maybe it's just that he's less easily surprised, even when the girl in yellow armor turns up, complaining that Command kicked her out of Blood Gulch after her super rave night and can she crash here for a while? Even when the guy in brown armor that he thought he shot shows up right after her, saying something about backups. Although that quickly becomes annoying, especially because he tapped into the Red Team comm frequency way back when he thought they might actually be fighting each other and his translation software is still working. Which means he gets to be privy to the brown armor guy's explanation for what the "little death" means and that yes, by that standard the brown armor guy totally killed the yellow chick multiple times.

After a brief interlude in which all Wash wants to do is drive something sharp into his ears, he shuts off all comm links to Red Base and continues on with his routine, which now includes awkward explanations to Caboose about the weird noises coming from Tucker's room.

The funny thing is, even with all the problems that come with being part of Blue Team (if he hears "bow chicka wow wow" one more time, he is going to shoot everything) and the necessity of looking at things in a different way (is something on fire? If not, then Caboose is probably fine), some things are getting easier. He still has some of Epsilon's memories, tangled with his own in ways that come out at unsettling moments, but horrible as they are, they're beginning to fade. He no longer dreams of Tex's death, or of the death of the woman who Tex was modeled on. Instead, more often he dreams that Caboose has adopted a tyrannosaur and named him Whiskers, or that Red Team is hosting a high school graduation and he has to handle the catering, or that the Covenant has invaded Valhalla and no one will pay any damned attention to him because they're too busy monkeying about. Frustrating dreams, but not nightmares.

He can deal with that. He can even deal when Tucker's "kid" Junior turns up (and okay, he'd read the material on the whole parasitic embryo thing, but seriously _what_ ). There's a bad moment when he remembers the aliens back at the temple, but this one doesn't seem to know or care about that -- or indeed anything other than emptying Blue Base's fridge. Definitely Tucker's kid.

Any oncoming arguments over fridges, parasitic embryos, weird noises, or how crowded Blue Base has suddenly become are interrupted the next day by a descending scream and a crash of orange armor. Turns out Junior's arrival did not go unnoticed, and Sarge has decided to preemptively strike by augmenting Red Base's man-cannon and launching what he refers to as a "Grif Barrage."

For a brief moment Wash regrets switching off his spylink on Red Team's comms, but the attack quickly turns into a shouting match between Grif and Sister, then between Grif and Lopez, then Sarge and Sister (the phrase "stealing his robot virtue" is used, at which point Wash wishes he could turn off his short-range audio as well). He goes down to the kitchen, then comes back up and nudges Caboose. "Come on. Let's go have lunch."

Caboose doesn't argue, maybe because Wash does make pretty good food. They make their way up the cliff, past the forty-nine little cairns, none taller than knee height. A set of other cairns marks the other side of the path, one for every person Wash has killed. There's more overlap than he likes.

"Are you sure they'll be okay?" Caboose glances back at Blue Base with a worried expression.

"Pretty sure." And if not, he's got tranq rounds in the sniper rifle and a good vantage point from here. He settles down in his usual spot and unpacks lunch. "They're all friends, after all. I mean, they hate each other, but they're still friends." And that was probably the weirdest thing about this place. Maybe that's why the Alpha stayed so long. Maybe this was, in the end, the best place for the Alpha to be.

And for him?

"Yeah, it's good to have friends." Caboose sits down beside him. "I tried making a friend of my own once. That didn't go so good." He glances at Wash. "Sorry about that."

Wash shakes his head. "Don't apologize. Your intentions were good." Even if he's not sure exactly what Caboose is apologizing for, he's sure of the latter.

Caboose makes a noise of agreement and wolfs down his lunch. Below them, Simmons and Tucker are both yelling at Lopez, Sarge is attempting to fit Grif's head (but not the rest of Grif) in the man-cannon, and Sister and Junior are sneaking off together. Everything seems to be in its right place, for certain definitions of "right."

"Might as well stay put," he says aloud. It sounds right, even outside his head. It's okay, for now.

At least until the next time Caboose puts everybody in armor lock.


End file.
